Dawson City からInuvikまでおよそ800kmの道路、スピードだせますか？時速30〜４０km位しか出せませんか？
一日４００ｋｍ程度の走行予定しています。もっと可能でしょうか？日の長い６月頃の予定です。

Whitehorseまでは舗装道路で経験ありますので問題ありません。

経験のある方、アドバイスください。

Driving the Dempster

Adventurous road trip along the 734-kilometres gravel lifeline from the Yukon to Inuvik follows a traditional Gwich'in hunting and trapping trail.

By Canadian Tourism Commission November 15, 2004 Be the first to post a comment

It was the first time I'd ever seen a grizzly bear swatting at mosquitoes. A huge shaggy beast, he pawed his face and took swipes at a halo of bugs I could make out even through binoculars. He was making his way across the broad North Klondike River Valley, autumn yellow and orange tundra stretching towards the jagged skyline of the Tombstone Mountains. There was not another person in sight. It struck me as remarkable that less than two hours of driving had brought me to this wilderness from the Gold Rush razzle-dazzle of Dawson City where paddle wheelers ply the Yukon River and Diamond Tooth Gertie's gambling hall and the Sourdough Saloon dish out honky-tonk and burlesque.

Mounds of century old mine tailings line the road out of Dawson. After 20 minutes I turned left up the Dempster Highway, Canada's only public road north of the Arctic Circle. For 734 kilometres this gravel lifeline travels through the Yukon to Inuvik on the McKenzie Delta in the Northwest Territory. It follows a traditional Gwich'in hunting and trapping trail across three mountain ranges, two continental divides, five rivers and two time zones. Started in 1958, the Dempster didn't reach Inuvik until 1979. Although unpaved, the road is remarkably well maintained and is a popular road trip not only for cars, but also for intrepid RV drivers and cyclists.

Green roadside kilometre signs tick off the distance and by the time I've reached 70 I've climbed into Tombstone Territorial Park, the route's most scenic stretch and the best place for hiking trips, short and long. At kilometre 102 a single bull moose munches pondweed in Two Moose Lake. Further on a full grown wolf darts across the road. Lined in purple fire-weed, the highway plays tag with the tree line; in the lowlands lush boreal forest surrounds lily pad-dotted ponds and as the road gains altitude the landscape is transformed into wide open, tree-less High Arctic tundra.

There are no communities on the Dempster's Yukon stretch, only the service oasis of Eagle Plains at kilometre 369 - a hotel, restaurant and gas station. Historical photos cover the hotel hallways including those of the famous outlaw, the Mad Trapper of Rat River. In December 1931 trapper Albert Johnson shot a police officer on the Rat River then evaded a posse before being killed in a shootout with police at his cabin on February 17, 1932, just 25 kilometres from the present hotel. The leader of that police patrol was RNWMP Corporal Dempster after whom the highway was named.

Blowing snow that obscures the Arctic Circle marker at kilometre 405 is a reminder that this is a winter road even in mid-August. Snow storms have closed the Dempster during every month of the year and in some stretches strong winds have ripped signs off posts and flipped fully loaded trucks. Near the Northwest Territory border a broad valley is on the migration route of the Porcupine Caribou Herd; in late fall vehicles can be surrounded with antlers as thousands of caribou are on the move.

A car ferry shuttles me 200 metres across the Peel River to Fort McPherson, the southernmost of three NWT towns on the Dempster. A Gwich'in native settlement of log houses, satellite dishes, tepees, canoes and skidoos, many of its 950 inhabitants still carry on a traditional lifestyle of trapping beaver and hunting caribou.

At kilometre 608 the MV Louis Cardinal ferry takes me across the kilometre wide McKenzie River - the second biggest in North America after the Mississippi - which drains one-fifth of Canada's land area. The ferry is also the only access to Tsiigehtchic, formerly Arctic Red River, a Gwich'in community of 170 perched on a hillside overlooking the confluence of the McKenzie and Arctic Red Rivers, where moccasins sway on clotheslines and smokehouses filled with drying whitefish billow on a quiet Saturday morning.

In November, as the Peel and McKenzie Rivers freeze up, the Dempster Highway is closed. Road crews monitor the ice until it's thick enough to re-open the highway in early December when vehicles simply drive across the ice road until spring when the highway closes again during break-up.

Smooth paved road feels strange under my wheels after 734 corrugated kilometres as I pull into Inuvik, population 3,400, a no-nonsense far-north working town and the life support for the entire Western Arctic. Restaurants serve caribou and musk ox and the town landmark is an igloo-shaped church. In forested suburbs I bed down at the Swiss-style log Arctic Chalet run by a true northern couple; Olav Falsnes is a bush pilot and his wife, Judi, raises blue-eyed Huskies to pull her dog sleds.

In summer Inuvik is the terminus of the Dempster Highway, but in winter the road continues for another 190 kilometres across the frozen Arctic Ocean to Tuktoyaktuk. In a Twin Otter I fly across the McKenzie Delta to "Tuk", an Inuvialuit hamlet surrounded by the world's biggest concentration of pingos, conical tundra frost heaves with ice cores. A town tour takes in the old log Anglican church where the altar cloth is sealskin and the collection plate is of wolverine fur. There is also an unusual community freezer carved out of the permafrost 10 metres underground where families store food for their dog teams.

I was invited to the home of James and Maureen Pokiak for a traditional Inuvialuit meal. While she lays out strips of smoked beluga whale that look like beef jerky, Lorraine explains she came north to Tuk to teach school for a year. "That was 28 years ago," she laughs. She married James, a traditional hunter and trapper who also leads polar bear hunting trips. Our multi-course meal includes smoked whitefish, bannock bread and beluga muktuk - cubes of skin and fat. "We like it with HP sauce," says Lorraine. We finish with a delicious caribou soup.

On the way to the airport I ask my driver to make a quick stop to complete a ritual that signals the official end to a Dempster drive. As a cold wind whips up whitecaps and sled dogs howl I strip off my shoes and socks, take a deep breath and very quickly dunk my toes into the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean.

車のコンディション、燃料、食料、スペアタイヤなどを用意しないと、何か起きると死にます。